Teknogeeks

Games. Every one of us likes to play games. Even while I was writing this, every time I took a break I played a game to freshen up my mind. It has become an intangible aspect of her life. They affect our lives directly or indirectly and sometimes without us realizing the same.

Gaming is a worldwide phenomenon now. Games have become a big industry, where newstrides and advancements are made everyday. But all this was not a single day process. Years of technological advancement, perseverance and evolution of ideas of various individuals and companies has led us to the platform we are at present.

In this article, we are going to go through the various major milestones in the gaming industry. This article is not aimed at any single mode of giving but it considers the gaming industry as a whole whether it is a computer game or a console or a mobile game.

source-techcrunch.com

Evolution of Gaming Consoles 1950s: First major breakthrough

Pong, the electronic table-tennis simulation game, was one of the most popular and primary games for several those who grew up within the Seventies and is currently recognized as one of the earliest video games.

However, the precursors to modern video games were created as early as the 1950’s. In 1952, one of the earliest computers were built-in with a tic-tac-toe game, and in 1958 Brookhaven National Laboratory formulated a game called “Tennis for Two” to entertain individuals returning through the laboratory on tours. This era can be marked as a significant step in the gaming industry as these were the first commercially available video games.

A window on the widely popular pong game.

Evolution of Gaming Consoles 1970s: Atari and aftermath

The first machine arcade game was shapely on spacewar. it had been referred to as computer Space, and it fared poorly among the overall public thanks to its troublesome controls. In 1972, Pong, the table-tennis machine which symbolizes early computer games, was created by Atari, and it had blown the charts out of proportion.

Pong was at the start placed in bars with pinball game machines and different games of probability, however as video games grew in quality, they were placed in any institution that may take them. At the end of the 70’s, such a lot of video arcades were being designed, and it created a major distraction and in some cases nuisance, which resulted in some cities passing partition laws limiting them.

The end of the 70’s commenced  a new era—what is now called the golden age of video games—with the sport area Invaders, a worldwide hit that exceeded all expectations. In Japan, the game was so popular that it caused a national coin shortage.

Games like area Invaders illustrate each the result of arcade games and their influence on international culture. On the opposite side of the world, Japanese and American teens communicated through the language of video games. This set out the fact that games can be a universal language and laid the foundations of a multiplayer game.

Development of Consoles

The first game console began its commercial operation in 1972. It was called the Magnavox Odyssey, and it had been engineered by Ralph Behr within the late 60s. This console also had a Pong-type game, and once the arcade version became popular, the Odyssey began to sell well. Atari, which was creating arcade games at the time, determined to supply a home version of Pong and released it in 1974.

Although this allowed the user to play only one game at a time, its graphics and controls were superior to the Odyssey, and it had been sold through various sales outlets. Thanks to these benefits, the Atari home version of Pong sold well, and a bunch of alternative firms began manufacturing and commerce their own versions of Pong Pong became increasingly popular during this period

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Magnavox Odyssey

Home Computer

The birth of the personal computer market within the 1970’s paralleled the emergence of computer game consoles. The first personal computer for household purposes was “the Altair”. Launched in 1975, it mainly targeted the elitist market. Steve Jobs, the founding father of Apple, was building computers and merchandising them. In 1977, 3 vital computers—Radio Shack’s TRS-80, the commissioned naval officer PET, and therefore the Apple II—were created and available commercially.

The rise of personal computers allowed room for  a lot of advanced games. Designers of games like Mystery House, developed in 1979 for the Apple II, and Rogue, developed in 1980 and contend on IBM PCs, used the process power of early home computers to develop video games that had extended plots and storylines. In these games, players could movel through landscapes composed of basic graphics, determination issues and dealing through associate concerned narrative. 

Evolution of Gaming Consoles 1980’s: The Crash

Atari’s success within the home console market was due to its possession of already-popular arcade games and built their business around these games. These strengths did not materialize and the consumers were not satisfied, which led to low sales and eventually losses, what’s currently referred to as the computer game crash of 1983. Atari bet heavily on its past successes with fashionable arcade games like Pac-Man for the Atari 2600. Pac-Man was a prospering arcade game that failed to translate well to the house console, resulting in unsuccessful      shoppers and lower-than-expected sales.

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As retail outlets became increasingly wary of home console failures, they began limiting the sales of them in their retail. This led to overproduction and a resulting fallout in the video game market in 1983. Many smaller game developers did not have the capacity to withstand this downturn and went out of business. Although Coleco and Atari were able to make it through the crash, neither company regained its former share of the video game market. It was 1985 when the video game market picked up again.

Nintendo enters the fray

Nintendo, a Japanese card and novelty producer  had begun to enter the electronic game market in the 1970s.  Nintendo ensured lower priced consoles, but not at the cost of graphics, as it used newer, better microchips, bought in large quantities, to ensure high-quality graphics.

Nintendo did what Atari could not and targeted the mass audience and relied on the success and popularity of games in order to earn their profits. This allowed Nintendo to dominate the home video game market through the end of the decade, when one-third of homes in the United States had a Nintendo system.

In 1985, Nintendo introduced its Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) in the United States. The game Super Mario Brothers was released is considered as a landmark in video game development. The game had a complicated narrative but its controls were accessible and its objectives simple. The game appealed to teens generally boys in the 8–14 range, than the one targeted by Atari.

The Nintendo Entertainment System

Evolution of Gaming Consoles: The 1990’s Beginning of the Modern Era

The gaming community took pace and major strides were made from here on. Advancement of games took place at a rapid rate throughout the 1990s,  from the first 16-bit consoles in the early ’90s to the first Internet connectivity-enabled home console in 1999. Companies increased their focus on marketing, and video games had become a global phenomenon now.

Beginning of Console Wars

The home console market was dominated throughout the late 1980’s by

Nintendo. It had  built a large library of games for use on the NES. This proved detrimental for the consumers, as Nintendo was reluctant to improve or change its system for fear of making its game library obsolete. Technology had changed in the years since the introduction of the NES, and companies such as NEC and Sega were ready to challenge Nintendo with 16-bit systems.

As mentioned earlier, Nintendo targeted 8- to 14-year-olds, Sega shifted the focus on 15- to 17-year olds, making games that were more suited to that particular age group. This enabled Sega to present itself as a modernised and a company not afraid to make new technologies.

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Nintendo responded to the Sega Genesis with its own 16-bit system, the Super NES, and began creating more mature games as well. Games such as Sega’s Mortal Kombat and Nintendo’s Street Fighter competed to raise the level of violence possible in a video game.

Nintendo’s Mortal Combat

 Rising Popularity of Computer Games

Computers were becoming a mainfray at homes during this time. Consoles which could not be afforded by many, presented computers as an option for masses to play games on. The development of the First-person shooter(FPP) genre,  popularized by the 1992 game Wolfenstein 3D, could be marked as the beginning.

These games put the player in the character’s perspective, making it seem as if the player were firing weapons and being attacked. Doom, released in 1993, and Quake, released in 1996, used the increased processing power of personal computers to create vivid three-dimensional worlds that were impossible to fully replicate on video game consoles of the era. These games pushed realism to new heights and began attracting public attention for their graphic violence.

Online Games gains Popularity

With the internet becoming immensely popular during this time, online gaming feature began to be incorporated in the games coming out at this time.. A game called Doom had the feature of multiplayer gaming through the Internet. Strategy games such as Command and Conquer and Total Annihilation also included options where players could play each other over the Internet. Other fantasy-inspired role-playing games, such as Ultima Online, used the Internet to initiate the massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) genre.

Portable Gaming Systems

The development of portable game systems was a significant aspect of video games during the 1990s. But it was not a completely new concept.  Handheld consoles  had been in use since the 1970s, and a system with interchangeable cartridges had even been sold in the early 1980s. Nintendo released the Game Boy in 1989, using the same principles that made the NES dominate the handheld market throughout the 1990s.

The unit’s simple design meant users could get 20 hours of playing time on a set of batteries, and this basic design was left essentially unaltered for most of the decade. More advanced handheld systems, such as the Atari Lynx and Sega Game Gear, could not compete with the Game Boy despite their superior graphics and color displays.

Nintendo’s Game Boy

Evolution of Gaming Consoles The 2000s: Gaming develops as an Industry

Continuing Console Wars

In 1999, Sega released a console called  Sega Dreamcast. This console could connect to the Internet, and had similar features to advanced  computers during that period. The new features of the Sega Dreamcast were not enough to save the brand, however, and Sega discontinued production in 2001, leaving the console market entirely. 

Sony’s release of the PlayStation 2 (PS2) in 2000 was the changing point of the console. The PS2 could function as a DVD player, expanding the role of the console into an entertainment device that did more than play video games. This console was incredibly successful, enjoying a long production run, with more than 106 million units sold worldwide by the end of the decade.

In 2001, the console market became competitive. Two major competitions for the PS2 were the Xbox and the Nintendo GameCube. The Xbox was launched by Microsoft to enter the market with a console that expanded on the functions of other game consoles. It had features similar to a PC, including a hard drive and an ethernet port for online play through its service, Xbox Live.

The popularity of the first-person shooter game Halo, an Xbox exclusive release, boosted sales as well. Nintendo’s GameCube did not offer DVD playback capabilities, choosing instead to focus on gaming functions. Both of these consoles sold millions of units but did not come close to the sales of the PS2

Sony’s Play Station 2

Mobiles and Mobile Gaming

In 1997 when Snake was first introduced, it became a worldwide phenomenon due to its simple gameplay, addictive premise and the fact that it was suitable for all ages. Many such widely-popular games followed 1999 to 2005 such as Alien Fish Exchange and Space Invaders.In 2003, with the release of the Nokia N-Gage which used the idea of a game console and mobile phone in one.

According to consumers,  it did not fill either role very well. The product line was discontinued in 2005, but the idea of playing games on phones persisted and has been developed on other platforms.

Fast forward to 2007 when the iPhone was launched and one year later, with the introduction of the App Store, a new era of mobile games was born. When the App Store first launched, it offered only 500 apps, such as Texas Hold’em and Super Monkey Ball. With the introduction of the iPhone in 2007, mobile game developers were able to make use of multitouch-controlling.

In 2009, the first smartphone game to reach global popularity in a short amount of time, Angry Birds, set the bar for mobile gaming in the 2010s. At the start of the new decade, many video game publishers started to use apps as a second screen extension and as companion apps for video games such as Assassins Creed or Grand Theft Auto. 

Gaming: The Present

The trends of the late 2000s have shown a steadily increasing market for video games. Newer control systems and family-oriented games have made it common for many families to engage in video game play as a group. Online games have continued to develop, gaining unprecedented numbers of players. The overall effect of these innovations has been the increasing acceptance of video game culture by the mainstream.

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